At long last! Chapter 5 is here! I am deeply, deeply sorry for the billion-and-a-half-year wait--senior year of high school is eating up my life, and it just started! :O

Anyway, it's time for the Disclaimer (oh, there it is!): I don't own Danny Phantom, or any of the characters. I would not, however, be above stealing Vlad for a while. :D

Now to answer some of my wonderful reviewers:

Shining Zephyr-Haha, I think it's in Vlad's nature to be manipulative and evil and all the other things that go along with being bitter and alone. XD And it is in my nature to love him for it. -blush- One of the best on the site? You are way too nice, really. I can only say that I really hope you like this chapter, then! You are a dear, dear person, you really are. Thank you so much.

Thunderstorm101- Maddie definitely knows something's up, but between Vlad lying to her every ten seconds, Jazz's slip-ups, and Danny's attempts to fix things, it could be a while before she figures out what that something is...

doinstuff- I think "charming and awkward at the same time" is the perfect way to describe Vlad. :) He's getting a bit more manipulative and evil than in previous chapters, but he'll be back to his old fumbling ways soon enough, I promise! Thank you for reading, and for the lovely review. I appreciate it more than I can say. :D

TPcrazy-a fav?! Really? Thank you! And I totally couldn't phrase any of that better myself. Thank you so much. I hope you like this chapter!

MutantLover09-Jazz tries, I'm sure. XD Hey, Vlad needs to look his best, right? Haha. I can see where you're coming from on that--I don't think it's quite occurred to Vlad that Maddie is really 18 and he's a nice 40-something; he's too caught up in his success...for now, anyway. Hope you enjoy the chapter, and thank you x 1000 for the review!

RyaStarling- You might be spot-on with that...XD

Wishes for Wings- Vlad is a liar extrordinaire--you can be sure of that! And as for your other point...I don't want to say too much...mustn't give anything away, you know! Actually (and I totally forgot where I got it for a moment), I got her maiden name from the first name of Dr Henry Jekyll. But, gosh, your guess was so fitting! I feel like I should give you internet cookies for being awesome. :D Hope you like the chapter!

Clueless.1- Don't worry at all about the lapse in reviewing--my lapse in updating is truly shameful. I'm thrilled that you like the story. There isn't too much butt-kicking in this chapter, but where Vlad and Danny are, a fight can't be too far behind! Hope you like the new chapter--thanks for the review!

passionateartist- It's a surprisingly endearing quality, isn't it? XD Thank you for the review! I hope you like this chapter. :)

Data Seeker- Thank you for the review. I appreciate it and the polite way in which you worded your complaint. I will keep a close eye on my language in the future. Thank you, and I hope you like this chapter.

Risika135-Thanks so much for the review! I'm sorry the update took forever, but I hope you like the chapter! :D

goldacharmed-I'm not sure what to say here besides thank you! Your review is so kind and sweet and...agh, I can't be coherent!! XD Really, thank you thank you thank you. I hope you like this chapter! :D

werewolf5- Thank you for the review. :) And, as for Maddie, I've been trying to keep her basically true to the character we're all familiar with in the show, while adding in a couple teen characteristics. For example, she tries to be the logical, collected, self she grew into in college, but she can still be very impulsive and thoughtless, as you will hopefully see in this chapter. And all the confusion she's going through will definitely take a toll on her. I promise, in future chapters, fun!teen!Maddie will show up in all her glory. Hopefully you still like the story until then. :)

Alrighty, this chapter is a bit heavier than they've been so far, but I promise I'll be back to classic, light-hearted DP fun and shenanigans by the next chapter! I just had to get some angst out of the way. XD And, angsty as it is, this chapter is still dedicated to my reviewers--you guys are the reason I keep pulling this story up and working on it when I can. I love you all. 3

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'This can't be happening.' Maddie wasn't crying; she wasn't exactly sure if she should be. At the moment, the only thing she could be sure of was that something felt irreparably wrong; a sensation that had been hanging over her like the enormous, razor-sharp pendulum in the Edgar Allan Poe story she'd had to read in high school. Part of her wanted to attribute this to the onset of her apparent amnesia, which of course had left her feeling lost and displaced and desperately confused. And, as this was the most logical and least troubling of the readily available explanations (especially considering the fact that some scrap of her consciousness seemed determined to blame ghosts for her current situation), Maddie was inclined to accept it.

But, ironically, there were too many holes in this rationalization for Maddie to feel completely justified in labeling it as the ultimate truth. Firstly, there was the matter of her memories; namely the fact that she was beginning to remember things, at least, she kind of was. At the moment, there was a haze of feelings and sounds swimming around somewhere behind her eyes, accompanied by occasional pangs of déjà vu so severe that Maddie felt like she was acting out a movie she had already seen. The strange part about this, though, was the fact that these memories always seemed to be—and there was the word, again—wrong. She still couldn't remember anything about Vlad other than what the past few hours had taught her—that he was wealthy, charming, and a little forward—but if he was to believed, the two of them had spent a lot of time, together. In the same vein, there was Danny and Jazz. Maddie had felt an intrinsic sense of protectiveness towards Danny from almost the moment she had first set eyes on him—once she'd gotten over her initial reluctance to trust him, of course. And the affection she felt for him still was enough to baffle her. She barely knew the boy, and yet the thought of him being hurt was almost enough to make her cry, and she was aware that, should she ever see any of the ghosts responsible for his injury again, most of the damage she would deal them would be for his sake. And as for Jazz, Maddie knew that the relief she'd felt when the redhead had burst into Vlad's lab was mostly because she provided an excellent distraction from Vlad, but there was also an underlying sense of joy just to see the girl. It might not have been so unusual, had Vlad not assured her that she'd met neither Danny nor Jazz before.

It just didn't make sense—it didn't add up. How could she have such an affinity for two people she'd never met before, yet harbor such impartiality towards the employer who had not only granted her her dream job, but also helped her to build her Ghost Portal? Either someone somewhere had seriously screwed up an essential set of calculations, or Maddie was missing information crucial to her if she expected to make an accurate and logical judgment on the circumstances she found herself in.

Of course, the thing that was troubling her the most at the moment was something that Jazz had said; tossed out carelessly, as though it were an insignificant detail and not something that could throw an entire lifetime's worth of memories into question.

'How can it be 2005? It's impossible! I would be, like, forty.' Maddie shuddered at the thought. (She also couldn't help thinking that, if this really was the 21st century, she was a little disappointed. There wasn't nearly as much chrome as she had expected, and absolutely nothing was hovering. It was almost pathetic.)

She took a deep breath, carefully tuning out the buzz her emotions were creating her mind so that she could think clearly. She needed this desperately—time, space to herself, an opportunity to just sit and think. Above all else, Maddie valued logic, and she consistently endeavored to keep a certain studious detachment from any situation she encountered. Usually, she failed. There was no doubt that Maddie was smart, that her though process was highly refined, had been carefully developed over the years, but there was an irrepressible spark of passion in her that often caused her to get carried away by emotion. It was a trait she found incredibly irritating in herself, and one that, unbeknownst to her, a certain Jack Fenton found remarkably endearing. So she sat, fuming, trying to focus on the problems she faced so she could then work out a solution.

Next to her, a lamp toppled off the nightstand. Maddie startled, jumping away and staring incredulously at the mess of porcelain splashed across the floor. There was no way she had done that…so how…? Someone—something—tapped her shoulder, and Maddie turned to find herself in unexpected proximity with the pale, grim face of the ashen-haired boy ghost. She let out a strangled cry of shock, propelling herself away from him, too stunned for the anger she had expected to feel upon seeing that deceptively kind face, again.

"Get away!" she howled desperately. Where had she put the Lipstick Laser? She searched her pockets frantically, turning up several unfamiliar devices that she tossed aside in her search. "Get away!" she repeated, more vehemently.

The ghost boy didn't respond; he looked upset, for some reason, and Maddie was seized with the completely unreasonable urge to comfort him. 'He hurt Danny,' she reminded herself. 'He's a ghost and he lied to you and he hurt Danny. Snap out of it!'

Finally finding the weapon she sought, Maddie swung around to face her enemy, firing a haphazard shot from the laser that the ghost boy dodged easily. It hit the wall, ricocheting back at her. Maddie gasped, closing her eyes and bracing herself for the inevitable impact. But the laser was not what hit her. Instead, Maddie felt a pair of arms close around her waist, followed by the collision of another body into hers that sent her tumbling to the floor. A tiny groan of pain escaped her.

"Are you all right, Mo—Maddie?"

The voice was familiar, but impossible. Maddie opened her eyes and stared in disbelief at her savior; the ghost boy looked back, concern etched into his expression. Immediately, her confusion and gratitude were buried under suspicion.

"I'm fine. Don't try anything funny, ghost." She pulled herself into a seated position and scooted back, away from the boy.

Danny winced at the unconscious insult. He knew he needed to stick to the plan—otherwise his mother might never come out of the room she had locked herself in—but he couldn't help the desire to make her like him.

"I just saved your life," he reminded her.

"Yeah, well, it's not the first time," snorted Maddie. "I don't know that this isn't another trick of yours. You and Count Ghostula."

Well, Danny had to admit, his mother's suspicions were dead-on. This time, at least. For a reason he couldn't quite place, he almost laughed, and it took the teen a moment to realize that the deep chuckle that filled the room suddenly was not his own.

"Very impressive," said Plasmius neatly, clapping slowly as he descended from the ceiling and landed square in front of Danny and his mother. Instinct took over, and Danny moved between Maddie and the billionaire before remembering what it was he was doing in the room in the first place.

Maddie sighed. "Why am I not surprised?" She steeled herself for another fight, holding out both hands in preparation to fire the Lipstick Laser. At both ghosts' amused expressions, she paused, glanced down at her hands. They were empty.

"No! I must've dropped the laser when—" She turned to Danny, her expression furious. "When you tackled me! I knew that was just another one of your tricks! Any to think that for even the tiniest second I was grateful to you! How could I be so stupid?"

"You've gotta be kidding me!" cried Danny. "How was I supposed to know that you would accidentally almost shoot yourself?"

Maddie scowled. "How am I supposed to know? You're the evil ghost mastermind, here, not me."

"Well, I'd hardly call him a 'mastermind,'" drawled Plasmius with a grin. Danny shot him an angry look. Whose side was he on, anyway? Well, his own, Danny supposed, but at the moment, Danny was, too.

Now that was a disturbing thought. "I'm on Vlad's side…against my own mom? This is getting way too weird. Let's just get this over with."

Taking advantage of his relatively close proximity to Maddie, Danny grabbed his mother by the arm, planning to go intangible and pull her through the door with him. She yanked away, clearly surprised, staring at him with abject horror that Danny had not been expecting. As she backed away, he realized that what had seemed to him to be a quick, painless way to scare his mother out of the room had resulted in something that scared him, instead: the first time he had, while in ghost form, grabbed his mother with intent other than to protect her. He had purposefully meant to frighten her, to, in a way, hurt her. Danny backed away from his mother quickly, his face a dark mirror of hers. He felt suddenly sick.

Though she couldn't for the life of her explain why, Maddie felt betrayed. The ghost-boy was bad news, she had always known that. She shouldn't be so surprised that he had tried to hurt her. Now if only she could find the Lipstick Laser, she could make this fight a little less one-sided. But before Maddie could get to searching for the weapon properly, she found it thrust unceremoniously under her nose.

"Looking for this?" The fanged grin of the vampire ghost was infuriating. As Maddie snatched for the Laser, he pulled it out of reach, then brought it close to her face once more. Maddie stood for a long minute, her pale violet eyes locked onto the ghost's face, watching him with clear distaste. Plasmius felt unspeakably uncomfortable under that stare—it was far to close to the looks she had given him back in college whenever she had claimed that he was "hitting on her"—but he tried not to let it show. One of her eyebrows twitched dangerously, and he wavered. It was only for the briefest second, but it was enough time for Maddie to make a second attempt at the Laser. Plasmius barely plucked it out of her grasp, but, surely enough, her fingers closed only on air.

"Uh-uh-uh," scolded Plasmius, allowing his well-practiced arrogance to smooth down the spike of adrenaline Maddie's near-win had sent surging into his ecto-bloodstream. "You are quite the little troublemaker when you have this thing, and I really don't feel like dealing with that, again." He squeezed the Laser in his fist, releasing something that resembled a crumpled-up tissue made of steel. Maddie let out a squawk that reverberated somewhere between indignant anger and offended disbelief.

"Hey! I worked really hard on that!"

Plasmius was unmoved. "You shouldn't have tried to shoot me with it, then," he replied flatly. Then, his love of gloating took over, and he added. "I think we've learned a valuable lesson here, don't you? In the future, if you want to keep something, you'll aim it at someone else." While Plasmius was speaking, he was simultaneously advancing on the unarmed—and as a consequence, very frightened—Maddie, splitting into three copies as he did. She backed away, both hands raised in an automatic, though useless, defense.

"What do you want?" she demanded, bravely endeavoring to hide the tremble in her voice.

Plasmius seemed to consider her question for a moment. Then his thoughtful frown curled up eerily at the ends, and he replied, "Oh, you'll find that out soon enough, I promise. Now, boy!"

Danny, who had retreated to a far corner of the room, remembered his part in the plan Vlad had formed earlier, and now sped to where his mother stood cowering against the door in the face of the three Plasmius copies. Going intangible, he phased through the door, then reached back in, hooked his mother under the arms, and pulled her out after him. She let out an almighty shriek, and Danny immediately set her on the floor and rushed back to Vlad's still-locked bedroom.

Maddie hit the floor directly in front of a very surprised Jazz and Mr. Masters.

"Maddie!" Vlad reached out to help her up, and she accepted his arm gratefully. "Are you all right? What happened? You just appeared out of thin air!"

"There…were ghosts," wheezed Maddie, her short time spent intangible having clearly surprised the breath from her. Vlad felt a pang of regret that quickly blended into anger towards Daniel.

"Ghosts?" he asked, concern etched into his eyes, his expression, his voice.

Maddie nodded. "The same ghosts I saw earlier. The ones who hurt Danny."

"You aren't hurt, are you?" Jazz sounded timid, still embarrassed about the fact that it was her blunder that had sent Maddie into seclusion in the first place. But there was also a hint of anger in her voice—if Vlad had caused her mother any harm, he wasn't going to get away with it.

Maddie squinted at her, as if trying to remember who she was. "No, no, I'm fine," she said slowly.

Vlad and Jazz could see the exact moment when Maddie remembered why she had fled from them; her eyes grew very wide and panicked, and her mouth dropped open. Then she sucked in a sharp breath and held it, as if unsure of what her next move should be. Vlad, ever the level-headed businessman, quickly interceded.

"Maddie!" he blurted. "Jasmine had something she wanted to say to you." He turned to Jazz. "Didn't you Jasmine?"

"Uh, right!" agreed Jazz vehemently. "I…I wanted to apologize. About the joke I made earlier. I didn't know about the accident, and what I said was very tactless of me."

"Joke?" asked Maddie, puzzled.

"About the year," explained Jazz. "You remember; when l told you that it's 2005? I have no idea why I thought that would be funny. I'm very sorry if I upset you." Her smile was fleeting and apologetic, and soon it had disappeared all together. Jazz stared down at her feet, snatching a glance at her mother before looking away, again.

"It was…a joke?" Maddie wasn't entirely convinced, if only because she couldn't figure out why Jazz would make such a joke in the first place. Under what circumstances would that have been funny?

"Yes," Jazz assured her. "Just a harmless little joke."

"Well it obviously wasn't harmless, Jasmine," scoffed Vlad, which earned him a glare from the girl he addressed.

"I said I was sorry," she muttered, but Maddie wasn't listening, anymore. The room she had just been forced out of had become suspiciously quiet—obviously devoid of all the ghostly activity it had previously been exhibiting. She approached the door carefully, pressed her ear against it. Nothing. She tested the handle, and to her surprise she found that it turned without resistance. The door had unlocked itself? That didn't make any sense. She turned to Vlad.

"Where's Danny?"

"Daniel?" asked Vlad, a hint of nerves in his voice. "Well, he's probably still in my bedroom where I left him to rest. Why?"

"We have to go get him and make sure he's safe." Maddie elbowed her way past Vlad and hurried down the hallway to the room she had seen her boss lock the injured teen into. "It seems that I keep getting attacked by those ghosts every time I'm by myself; it isn't safe for anyone to be alone in this house, especially not for someone in Danny's state."

"Maddie," Vlad began to protest, reaching out to stop her. She turned on him.

"What?" She crossed her arms and looked at him expectantly, eyebrows raised, mouth a thin, stern line. "Stop? Don't? You may think you're protecting Jazz and Danny by not telling them about the ghosts in this house, Mr. Masters, but in reality you're doing the exact opposite." She gestured sharply with her index finger, jabbing Vlad challengingly in the chest. "Those ghosts present a very real danger. I keep getting attacked, and Danny was seriously hurt! How long do you think you can just ignore this problem?" She pulled away, again, and narrowed her eyes. "Or do you just not care?"

Widening her eyes in forged alarm, Jazz cried, "Ghosts?! What ghosts?"

Vlad turned to glare at her, and Jazz laughed nervously and edged behind a particularly large potted plant. Then his attention returned to Maddie, who was still watching him with somewhat pessimistic anticipation.

"Maddie," he began, in his most persuasive tone. "I do care about Daniel's safety. You must believe that."

Maddie's anger seemed to falter. "I…I know," she admitted finally. "I've seen the way you are around him, and I don't doubt that you care about him." She paused, and some of her previous rancor returned. "What I'm not sure about, however, is whether you care about Danny more than you care about yourself."

Vlad opened and closed his mouth several times, unable to find the words to respond to Maddie's accusation.

"M-Maddie, what do you mean?" he managed finally.

Maddie leveled a clinical gaze on him. "Why would you hide the fact that your house is haunted from people you claim to care about when you know it could put them in danger? Are you worried about the effect it would have on your image if word got out? On your company's sales, maybe?" Her mouth twisted sideways thoughtfully. "I haven't quite figured it out, yet, but I have plenty of time for that, later. Right now, I'm going to go make sure Danny is okay. Come on, Jazz." She extended a hand to the girl she couldn't recognize as her daughter, but had begun to see as a potential friend. Jazz rushed to Maddie's side, and the two girls set off down the hallway, leaving Vlad staring open-mouthed after them in horrified astonishment.

The moment they were out of Vlad's earshot, Maddie let out a long breath.

"I am fired big time," she groaned despairingly. "I can't believe I just said those things to Mr. Masters! I'm surprised he didn't go, like, completely mental on me." She turned to Jazz, bottom lip pinched between her teeth. "You know him pretty well, don't you? I can't remember much about him."

"Uh, I guess so," replied Jazz, honestly enough.

"Do you think he'll fire me?" A deep crease of concern brought Maddie's eyebrows together. Before Jazz could respond, she let out another worried huff of air. "I guess I'd deserve it, huh? After all he's done for me, and how understanding he's been about this whole accident thing." She paused thoughtfully as she realized that she still hadn't managed to wrangle an explanation out of Vlad about what exactly the infamous accident had consisted of. She waved one hand vaguely, as if trying to brush this concern away from her. It was like trying to brush over a building. If Mr. Masters fired her, where would she go? What would she do? Did she have any friends? What if her family had moved?

"Still," she continued wretchedly. "I couldn't stop myself! And I totally don't understand why he wouldn't tell you about the ghosts."

'Because he is the ghosts,' thought Jazz grimly, but before she could repeat this out loud, she was interrupted by the sound of Vlad's voice.

"Perhaps he simply made a mistake."

Startled, Maddie flinched and grabbed Jazz by the arm. Then, she turned slowly to face her employer, her apprehension and concern stamped plainly on her features.

"Mr. Masters," she said softly. "I'm sorry."

Vlad smiled magnanimously. "You have nothing to be sorry for, Maddie. You…are right." He spread his hands in a broad gesture of surrender. "I was wrong not to tell Jasmine and Daniel about the ghosts; I admit that. But, you see…" He stopped and shook his head. "This is something I need to discuss with you at another time, in private. Right now, we must make sure that Daniel is safe. That's the most important thing."

Maddie was puzzled about what Mr. Masters could need to tell her that he couldn't—or wouldn't—say in front of Jazz, but he did seem genuine in his acknowledgement of his mistake, so she was willing to indulge him a little. She smiled at him hesitantly, allowing him to lead her—one hand pressed surreptitiously into the small of her back—to the door of his bedroom. He fished the key out of his pocket, paused for a moment, cleared his throat loudly.

"Well," he said, his voice far above the necessary volume. "I suppose we should go inside and see if Daniel is alright." The slow, careful way he spoke these words, as if purposefully addressing some unseen eavesdropper, caused Maddie to raise an eyebrow. Vlad simply smiled in return and opened the door.

Danny was seated on the bed, rumpled sheets covering his lap and legs. He looked up as the door opened, eyes still cloudy with sleep. Maddie immediately rushed in to examine his condition.

"Danny! Are you okay?" She perched herself on the bed next to him, gentle fingers grazing the skin of his forehead as though she sought a fever.

The corners of Danny's mouth turned up into a small smile. "Yeah," he replied, somewhat sheepishly. "I have a little bit of a headache, but I'm still in one piece." The bruise-like shadows under his eyes suggested exhaustion that his hours of rest had been unable to cure, but he was obviously otherwise unharmed.

Vlad approached the bed, hands folded behind his back, an expression of concern layered thick to hide his true emotions.

"You're a very lucky boy, Daniel," he said so convincingly that it took even Danny a moment to realize that the billionaire was on the verge of a very big lie. "That little accident you caused in the lab could easily have killed you. How many times must I tell you to be more careful? You know you're not allowed to go in there without me."

Over Vlad's shoulder, Danny could see Jazz's face go from worried to suspicious to furious. Frustrated. They should've seen this coming, should've known that Vlad would try something like this. They should've been prepared with some way to refute him. But the two of them had been so focused on repairing the damage that Jazz had caused with her careless slip of the tongue; neither of them had been able to look far enough ahead to plan an explanation for Maddie's amnesia, for the ghosts, for Danny's injury. And certainly neither of them had yet been able to devise a way to bring up the truth.

But Vlad had thought ahead. Of course he had. He had probably been planning this all along. It was impossible to tell where Vlad's scheming ended and where his incredible good luck began.

Danny gritted his teeth. He would have to grind out an apology, now, one that would no doubt burn bitterly on his tongue. An apology to Vlad. He could already see the strain of a smug smile tugging at the edges of the older hybrid's mask of parental care and loving admonishment. Danny couldn't apologize. Even if he didn't say the specific words, he knew Vlad would take it as an apology for everything: for interfering with his initial plans to erase Maddie's memories of Danny's father, for all those battles and hateful words, for not joining him when first given the chance, for being Jack's son and not Vlad's. For being a constant, painful reminder that, while Vlad's life had remained suspended in a state of constant, ceaseless determination to right and unrightable wrong done to him over twenty years ago, Maddie had moved on without him. She had gotten married. Had children. Been happy. All things that still eluded Vlad.

And Danny refused to apologize for that. Vlad should just get over it, like a normal person. There were plenty of unrequited loves in the world. But only Vlad Masters, King of the Fruit Loops, built the Vaporizer.

'Get over it,' thought Danny angrily.

Vlad frowned. "I'm glad to see you're well, Daniel, but I think, at the very least, you owe myself and Ms. Henries and apology."

To Danny's surprise, his mother turned to him and shook her head.

"You don't owe anyone a thing, Danny," she said sharply. "Mr. Masters, with all due respect, sir, you admitted your mistake. Don't you think it's time to right it?"

It took Vlad a moment to process what Maddie meant. When the implications of her words finally hit him, he had to fight back a grimace. She wanted him to apologize to Daniel. Well, that wouldn't do.

"Maddie, I—"

Maddie raised an eyebrow.

"I haven't been entirely honest with you."

For a split second, Danny believed that Vlad was about to come clean, to admit to Maddie what he had done. But that second passed quickly.

"Daniel knows about the ghosts."

"What?!" cried Maddie and Danny simultaneously.

Vlad spoke quickly, so as to finish weaving his web of lies before anyone—more specifically Danny or Jazz—could breathe a word of the truth to snap its fragile threads.

"Maddie, Daniel already knows about the ghosts—he has for quite some time. This isn't his first visit to my castle; the boy's father and I were friends in college, and Daniel comes to visit me rather frequently. However, the current visit—the first time he has visited while you were under my employ—began a little over a month ago. That is when the two of you first met. When you learned about his interest in ghosts, you offered to show him some of the experiments we were working on in the lab. The ghosts you've seen—the young boy and the rather impressive vampire-like apparition—were part of our studies. You and I had captured them hardly a week previously while on a cautionary trip into the Ghost Zone through the Ghost Portal, and we were running tests on them.

"Daniel knew how dangerous the experimental process was, how dangerous it could be if the ghosts escaped, but he convinced you to give him the security code to the lab all the same. I don't blame you, Maddie; I'm sure it was merely a momentary lapse of judgment, but it was with that code that Daniel was able to access the lab while neither of us was there to supervise him. Your accident, the accident that caused the amnesia you're experiencing now, was caused by a power surge that occurred when Daniel accidentally spilled soda on the controls of the Ghost Portal. The power went out for a full minute, which allowed the ghosts to escape the containment cells we had them in.

"When the power finally came back on, the ghosts' escape triggered the alarms, and you and I ran to the lab to see what was going on. You went to the Portal and tried to deactivate it to prevent the ghosts from escaping into the Ghost Zone, but the electricity was still unstable. You received a terrible electric shock that knocked you unconscious and caused the power to fail, again. I went to the circuit breaker and managed to get the lights back on. That, I believe, is when you came to. When I called to you, you asked me how I knew your name, and told me you didn't recognize me. After that, the ghosts came back and attacked you and Daniel." He paused. "And I believe you can recall what happened from there."

At this point, Maddie's eyes were wide with a swirling mixture of emotions that cancelled one another out so effectively as to make her seem completely lifeless. Her mouth had gotten very small, as if to compensate, most of her bottom lip disappearing between her teeth. Danny had felt his jaw drop open somewhere near the middle of Vlad's story, and still he had not found the presence of mind to shut it. Jazz looked murderous and devastated at the same time.

Vlad spoke again, his tone hushed with apology. "When I realized you had lost your memories, I was almost thankful," he said, kneeling on the floor at Maddie's side and placing a hand on her knee, covering her own hands, which were trembling uncontrollably. "I was afraid you would blame yourself for Danny's injury and the ghosts' escape."

Danny was horrified. Not only was Vlad's story, admittedly, quite believable, it put Maddie at fault for the accident that had caused her own amnesia. And how was he supposed to refute it? With all the information Vlad had just thrown at his mother, Danny knew that it would destroy her to be immediately bombarded with an equal amount of contradictory evidence. So he settled for gaping helplessly at Jazz, who looked back at him with a desperate expression. It pleaded for a solution, for an idea, and Danny, unable to offer either, tore his eyes away.

"Think, Danny" he commanded himself quietly. "Think. You've got to come up with a way to fix this…before Vlad comes up with a way to make it even worse."

But that was easier said than done. Danny tried to concentrate, to sweep aside the rage and panic he was feeling and focus—but he couldn't. He wasn't the logical one; that was Jazz, and his mother. Danny was too much like his father; rash and impulsive, running mostly on pure instinct and the impulse to do what was right.

So when Maddie tore her hands away from Vlad and his artificial words of consolation and threw her arms around Danny's neck, sobbing apologies into his hair, all the boy could do was return her embrace, hoping against all reason that if he held on tightly enough, for a sufficient amount of time, he could fix everything through sheer will power.

Unfortunately for Danny, Vlad wasn't willing to give him the chance.

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Comments and Criticisms are more than welcome! Let me know what you think! Reviews are what keep me writing.